Introduction

Welcome to the Ardan Labs class on Rust FFI - the Foreign Function Interface.

This class is designed to teach you how to use Rust to interoperate with other languages. We will focus on C and C++ in this class, but the concepts can be applied to any language that supports a C FFI.

GitHub Reference

All of the files for this presentation are available here: https://github.com/thebracket/ArdanFfi

Building this Guide Locally

If you'd like to have a copy of this reference guide, clone the GitHub repo above and follow these steps in a terminal:

cargo install mdbook # If you aren't already an mdbook user
cd ArdanFfi/manual
mdbook serve

You can now open the URL http://localhost:3000 and have a locally served version of this guide.

Outline

• Getting Started with FFI
  • How to Avoid FFI
  • FFI and Safety
  • What is FFI Anyway?
    • A Gentle Start
      • Hello C
      • Hello Rust
      • Pop Quiz
      • Build the C Library
      • Extern C Gets Old, Fast
    • How about some Rust from C?
      • Create A Portable Rust Function
        • Let's Write some C
        • Static Linkage
        • Auto-generating a C Header
• That Was Easy! Let's Go Home
• Working with C in Rust
  • Our Porting Environment
  • Porting Our First Function
  • C Types
    • Matching C Types with FFI Types
    • Using stdint.h Types
  • C Structures
    • Simple Struct Usage
    • Simple Struct Pointers
    • Pointers and Ownership
      • Good Old Free
      • Make a Box
  • C Strings
    • Sending Strings to C Functions
    • Ownership
  • Callbacks and Functions
  • And Now... Some Pain
    • Accidentally Including The World
    • Macros
    • Into the Void
    • Unions
• Working with Rust in C
  • Slices
  • Slices with Structs
  • Concurrency!
    • Yes, You Can Do That in C!
  • Async!
    • Let's Try It
• C++
  • Interop Would be Nice
  • CXX.RS
  • CXX.RS The Other Way Around